Why is Exclusive content a bad thing to some people?

I never really understood why some players consider exclusive content a negative thing for this game. Lets be frank about what exclusive means. This means content that required a certain dedication to the game, and time commitment. Being able to play well and organize with other players to accomplish legendary feats.

Skip all the talk about TBC and Vanilla being the "least accessible content blizzard created," lets talk about the here and now.

1) Having exclusive mounts and cosmetic items that disappear after the end of an expansion. Why is this bad? Should rewards not be tied to the context of the content they relate to? In other words, if cosmetic and vanity items are rewarded to players who do extremely difficult things like heroic raid bosses, or gladiator PvP, why shouldn't they be removed from the game when new expansions trivialize the content?

2) Raiding with only 1 mode of difficulty, and 1 form of raid. Yes im looking at you TBC. Why is it a bad thing to have this content aimed towards players who are on a higher echelon of playing or commitment? Even though only "1%" (insert any other low percentage from thin air here) of the player base raided, the game substantially grew in subscriptions. What was keeping people subscribing, when they "never got to see end game"?

And please, dont give me "the flair and excitement of a new game" or "the game was new back then" The game is new to anyone who picks it up for the first time even now days.

Last point:

The game is here for you (us) the players to have fun. Now if all you consider fun is "raiding" in whatever difficulty you "raid" in, then perhaps the game would lose your subscription. This is not however the case with World of Warcraft at all. In fact, even though more characters (not players) have seen "end game" content, it is still a minuscule number of people "raiding" compared to the population of WoW. I guess though since blizzard has trained players to think that all end game consists of is raiding, the problem lies in their own court. The real question you have to ask yourself.. what did end game consist of for all those players in Vanilla, TBC, and early WoTLK if only "1%" of them raided?

Right now Blizzard has a fine solution to exclusize content, at least with respect to raid mounts. We get a 100% drop on the final boss during current progression, and then a reduced 1 or so % drop chance when the content is trivialized. This preserves the rarity of the mount (for some time) while still giving people motivation to do older content. And to be perfectly honest, if it weren't for raid mounts I wouldn't be raiding.

Erhm because they don't get to see it? Really as simple as that; they feel left out and they pay the same amount of money.

The other side of the coin with this statement is that the content is there. They just need to do certain things to get into that content. Their $15 is the same amount as the guy who puts in the time and effort to see the content. Only, the one feels entitled to get into / see the content without putting any effort toward that goal, and the other is willing to.

---------- Post added 2013-06-07 at 09:34 PM ----------

Originally Posted by TyrantWave

Because it's like saying "Here's a book, but we'll only let 5% of people see the last chapter."

Or at least, it was.

You could still see the last chapter though, it was there for you to go out and grab. You just had to put some effort into doing so.

I don't mind exclusive content in general. What I do mind specifically is exclusive lore-content. I wouldn't mind a couple of raids each expansion being out of my reach if they weren't so lore-centric. But as it stands right now, I want to experience them for myself. Watching things on Youtube just isn't the same as playing through it yourself.

Originally Posted by Erin

I only saw a few minutes of it but it looked slicker than a lubed up olympic swimmer fleeing from a shark.

There's nothing at all wrong with it. In the end though it's an economics and design argument.

The obvious example is raiding content. Blizzard gets to make the call on whether or not to develop it and how much time and effort to sink into it. When 'raiding' as content was difficult to get into, i.e. more exclusive if you will, eventually it became difficult to justify the costs of creating it given the number of people doing it.

So they made a decision that if they could get more people into it in one form or another by making it less difficult--less exclusive--they could justify allocating more to it.

The move to make content 'less exclusive' is the natural result of a future in which it appears as if the game population will continue to shrink due to a number of factors. One can safely assume that exclusive content that is resource heavy to develop and which ends up having not much of an audience will be cut. That applies to raiding, PVP or any content really.

So the decision is really to make things accessible as a justification to keep them running or to keep certain things exclusive and if they fail to attract an audience cut them out.

This is the main point that the interview with the LOL content designer missed. Blizzard needs to make economic justifications for what they do because the nature of their game is simply more complicated than League of Legends with a lot more variety in content and moving parts.

Last edited by MoanaLisa; 2013-06-07 at 09:39 PM.

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1) Having exclusive mounts and cosmetic items that disappear after the end of an expansion. Why is this bad? Should rewards not be tied to the context of the content they relate to? In other words, if cosmetic and vanity items are rewarded to players who do extremely difficult things like heroic raid bosses, or gladiator PvP, why shouldn't they be removed from the game when new expansions trivialize the content?

Because when that new player sees you running around on what to them is the coolest mount ever (Ammani War Bear, or the ZG Tiger mount) and realizes that they will never be able to get it because it was deemed to be exclusive they may just say screw it and play something else.

exclusive mounts and titles? Those are a good thing, and I doubt many many are against it.
Exclusive raids? Those are indeed a bad thing, Why should a large part of the budget be spend on something only 5-10%~ will see?

Because content isn't worth putting in millions of dollars if it's only getting used by a tiny small amount of players. The more players will use it, the more reason is there to spend all those resources on it.

The ROI on creating a raid that only 0.1% of your customers will be using is minuscule.

exclusive mounts and titles? Those are a good thing, and I doubt many many are against it.
Exclusive raids? Those are indeed a bad thing, Why should a large part of the budget on something only 5-10%~ will see?

Because games change and the playerbase change, as does their lives, sure new people come along, but there are alot of people that have been with the game for 8+ years.

So we now have various different levels of end game content to suit a multitude of playstyles, and the people that still have the time and commitment have Heroics with all the bells and whistles that come with that (better gear/mounts/titles/achievements/knowledge they have taken down the hardest mode). There is your exclusive content.

And by the time those mounts etc are able to be solo farmed or easily farmed in smaller groups, those that are into the Exclusive content side of things are onto the new exclusive contents and all that comes with it (mounts/achievements/titles/etc etc).

And those of us that aren't interested in the intense nature of Exclusive content, can happily farm said mounts/achieves etc much much later, when it's not a huge deal.